I use an ad blocker when I can. I’ll often come across sites that notice this and put up little pleas for me to turn it off. I’m sympathetic to their request, of course. In fact, the blocker I use incorporates a whitelist that allows certain ads to show up — ads that don’t go out of their way to piss you off. I’m happy with that, but I’m not going to be turning the whole blocker off off any time soon. Why?
Continue reading “On Ad Blocking”I need a time machine
Thing is, this is actually a pretty embarrassing thing to admit…
Continue reading “I need a time machine”On suspending disbelief
I find the “willing suspension of disbelief” when reading fiction very odd. Not odd that it’s necessary for enjoyment of the story, but that the limits to how much disbelief we will suspend are so variable. The amount of sheer… rubbish… that we can accept in a good book can be enormous, yet at other times we require close adherence to reality.
Case in point: I’m a fan of science fiction and fantasy, so I can readily accept faster-than-light travel, magic and dragons — good grief, I love Doctor Who. I’m currently reading a book that’s a sort of supernatural police procedural, and this requires me to accept demonic possession, archangels on motorbikes, premonition and a few other totally impossible things.
Yet, when it came down to it, the thing I scoffed mightily at (and which has spoiled the book for me) is that the author expects me to believe that the Glastonbury festival takes place at the beginning of April!
Ludicrous idea.
How long is a piece of flex?
I bought a new lawnmower a few days ago. The old one was past it and needed to be retired, so I took the opportunity of a 15% off weekend to nip down to Homebase and get a new one.
Continue reading “How long is a piece of flex?”My irony meter will never recover
after exploding at the thought of the Saudi ambassador taking part in a march in support of the the right to free expression two days after his country gave Raif Badawi the first 50 of 1,000 lashes (and 10 years in prison) for the crime of exercising his right to free expression.
The power of words
I was reflecting just now on the way that the addition of a single word can sometimes transform a phrase from a hopeless, dispiriting signifier of joyless morbidity into a pean of delight and liberation.
The particular word that triggered this thought was the “former” in the phrase “former Education Secretary Michael Gove”.
Taste?
It is an infallible law of the universe that people who have the greatest desire to share their musical listening with the wider world also have the crappiest taste in music.
Crisis? What crisis?
Can someone explain why the abdication of King Juan Carlos of Spain should be referred to in the press as a ‘crisis‘?
As I see it, one unelected member of a privileged elite is stepping aside to give another unelected member of a privileged elite a go. Why should this concern anyone but them? Except, of course, insofar as the people pay for them to enjoy their priviliged lifestyles. The only problem that I can see is that, one of the having called it a day, there should be another waiting to take on the parasitism.
Bring on the republic!
Dear Mr. Farage…
I understand that recently you were made to feel uncomfortable by hearing people speaking in a foreign language on a train. Yesterday, I heard three non-English languages being spoken in the course of a short tram journey.
Here’s the thing, though: my life was not adversely affected one iota by it. I think that may be because I’m not a fucking xenophobe.
Pardoned? What for?
So, Alan Turing gets a Royal Pardon. What is he being pardoned for? Being gay? Being persecuted by the state for being gay?
There should be no pardon: being gay should never have been a crime. What is needed is the recognition that the crime should never have existed and that everybody who was convicted under it should be considered to have no such ‘stain’ on their character. A pardon implies forgiveness, but if there was no wrong, there is no forgiveness.
That still leaves the persecution by the state, of course. Nothing we do can amend that, but we can continue to to work towards implementing real equality for everyone, so that the need for this retrospective action does not occur again.
an old grey dog 
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